just joined

Hey I'm Hugh. I'm in my last year of high school right now but ive had a strange obsession with programming for about a year and a half. I was always messing with javascript, perl, and anything else web based but i have been taking a C++ class in school this year. I really fell in love with it. Doin great in the class too. Aced it for the semester. anyway, Im trying to learn anything i can about programming and different languages. I'm setting up a LAN, connecting an HP with 160 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, and a bunch of tanked out specs, an old Win95 box which im deleting and installing linux, and a notebook. connecting everything will be easy but i want to have good security. Ive been looking for tutorials but a cant seem to find out what i need to know about what hackers and admin's use. i dont even know what the language would be called. I just want to learn more about computers and have a better background in it when i go to college to be a software engineer. if anyone can give me any suggestions on what to search for and what i need to learn and implement security and self written code to my network. thanks to anyone who can help and by the way I love this community